Tag: solar beam

Blizzard made a few attempts to fix Force of Nature — the problem was that they would start to walk around and act crazy if their Wrath cast time was less then that of the global cooldown.

First, Blizzard increased the cast duration from 2.0 seconds to 2.5 seconds (while increasing the damage by 25%). This helped, but with the meta gem proc and Nature’s Grace, it was still very easy to hit the global cooldown.

Next, they reduced the global cooldown to .5 seconds. This has solved the problem. Force of Nature seems to be very viable on most of the fights in ToT. Enjoy treants that for the first time in WoW history … don’t suck!

Also, a small hotfix was made to Solar Beam. It seems you could spell reflect the silence back onto yourself:

In an effort to give balance some sort of PvE glyph (or maybe just nerf Solar Beam more), the Glyph of Solar Beam is changed on the PTR to the Glyph of Omens:

While you are not in an Eclipse, the following abilities now grant 10 Solar or Lunar Energy: Entangling Roots, Cyclone, Faerie Fire, Faerie Swarm, Mass Entanglement, Typhoon, Disorienting Roar, Ursol’s Vortex, and Mighty Bash.

This has already changed once, Solar Beam was removed, so it could likely change again. Using Faerie Fire/Swarm while on the run will obviously be a help for movement DPS.

Also, treants were modified to cast an instant spell on summon to help avoid the summon lag. Resto druids were given swiftmend which seems great, however balance druids were given… entangling roots. Which does nothing for PvE. Hopefully they’ll re-think this and give us some sort of PvE boon. (Shooting stars proc, perhaps?)

A lot of you probably got excited (as I did) when I first saw the patch notes for 5.1 — more moonkin buffs! There actually are not additional buffs, but a reflection of hotfixes that were applied way back on September 20th.

There were a few small changes that don’t look to be part of a hotfix, however, including a nerf/buff to Solar Beam as well as a change to Symbiosis:

The symbiosis change is welcome, as I’m sure all of you have been as frustrated as I am about placing it on raid/party members. The solar beam “nerf” I think will actually be welcomed. It’s rare you get someone stuck in a solar beam for the entirety of 10 (let alone 15) seconds, but now giving a double radius will make it more useful.

During the 4/16 Twitter Developer Chat Chat, Zarhym released one of their “most exciting” changes to Cataclysm is a new Balance Talent called “Solar Beam”. It appears it will work like the sun beams in the Freya encounter.

“Some of the new Balance talents for druids, like Solar Beam, which works like Freya’s spell where it instantly silences a target and they have to move out of the beam to get rid of the debuff.”

Looks interesting for PVP, and perhaps for trash pack pulls in PvE, but I’m not seeing a big PvE bonus for this. But it might be a big boon for arena druids, allowing you to force healers out in the open and not LoS-ing behind a stupid box.

Squawkbox

Latest on Mon, 08:16 am

Athosian: @Thravia - at 16.5k crit u can effectively stack mastery. But.. you must have the T16 4set in order to not loose out on procs.

Thravia: Hi Sunfyre.
According to all my calculations, and simulationcrafts, mastery is better than both haste and crit, and especially better than haste once you get past the GCD cap - so why are all balance druids going full on with crit/haste?
I am having trouble figuring out what is most effective, and I am currently creating a BiS list for 5.4, but I don't know if I should go with a mastery/haste build, or crit/haste.
Here is a chart of my stat weights, http://i.imgur.com/lQMfnFV.png (I am currently at 10300 haste, 16000 crit, and 547 item level)

Kogot: Hey! Just wanted to say thanks for having this page! I love it!

Sunfyre: Thravia: Not sure. I'm curious how this interacts with the nerf. If it's 8% on all targets, that'd be nice.

Sunfyre: Quiver: I'd stick with the lower BP until you can comfortably hit the higher one without sacrificing too much crit.

Thravia: Hi Sunfyre. Whats your thougths on the new T16 set bonus? It's been changed again.

Quiver: Hi Sunfyre!
I am low ilvl Boomkin (around 517). After getting the 1st haste breakpoint(5273) i started stacking as much crit as possible. If i squeeze my gear, i can get to the 2nd haste breakpoint (10296); now, my question is: should i somewhat neglect crit and go for that 2nd haste plateau?
Thanks in advance!

Manax: Hello Sunfyre, do you think balance druids one of the worst dps classes in mop? I mean... look at worldoflogs, there are no balance druids in the top dps sections at no boss. Always WL, Mages or hunter that are good on ranged bosses. And AOE dps poor too, compared to other classes. What do you think?

Sunfyre: It depends if you have RPPM proc'd items. If you have two RPPM items (or just the legendary meta), you'll want to do the pre-Solar start (and you immediately proc CA once you hit Solar).

Nodotx: Sunfyre, is one channelling pulse towards Lunar still the ideal opener? i.e. Starfall > Wrath > Lunar Eclipse?
I saw this reply recently on a thread:
"I'm not sure why OP still says start fight pre-lunar, long time ago I switched to Solar eclipse.
I pre pot, starfall, (one dot), CA + INCA (or 3x treants), dotting (by this time most if not all procs are up- both dots AND treants enjoy it) and starifre\ss, starfall again.
when u leave CA u auto moving to lunar eclipse- which get u 3rd starfall.
with the old opner, Until u enter lunar, and starfire\ss to 0 energy and poping ca- most procs are pretty much over :P"